INT: Let's talk a little bit more about casting. And if there had been roles that were difficult for you to cast that you remember or challenging roles.

RY: That's interesting. Well, as I said, you know, I have a real problem in casting in that I'm not au courant [French for “fully informed”]. [INT: Right.] I'm not familiar with, really, who's out there. And, you know, and I feel--I've always felt remiss as a Director that I'm not like watching every movie and following and studying. But it's not that I'm not interested. It's just that also it's, for me, pursuing that always seemed a little bit irrelevant since I'm trying to make stories and if I spent all my time running around looking at all that, maybe I'd be au courant, but what am I gonna be making, you know? So when I have had the opportunity to cast, my first--the first casting that I did on a film was with Mike Roemer [Michael Roemer] on NOTHING BUT A MAN. And we had a wonderful Black guy named Charles Gordone, who really helped us tremendously. He later got a Pulitzer Prize for NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY. He wrote a play. And he brought in a lot of people. And Mike and I chose them. We chose Ivan [Ivan Dixon], we chose Abbey [Abbey Lincoln]. Julie Harris [Julius Harris] was not an Actor. He plays the part of the father. He's wonderful in it. And he became an Actor, just recently, actually, passed away. Wonderful man. I mean that's how I learned about it, was by doing it. I don't think either Mike and I had very formal ideas about, you know, how you go about things. I think that's actually been something in my whole career. I haven't--

INT: Now has that changed, by the way? Just looking at casting, I mean you've done this now for a number of films and different kinds of things. Has your process changed a bit?

RY: Now, I get a Casting Director. So, I mean, if I'm making something. And actually, a number of the films that I've done recently, the television films, they've already been cast. I've actually been very happy with the casting. But CAUGHT, I did have a casting person, but really they were looking for extras and stuff like that. I really cast it myself, but then... But I always conferred with the Writer, Eddie Pomerantz [Edward Pomerantz] and with my Producers. [INT: Do you get involved, by the way, with the extra casting as well? I mean will you get involved? Be part of the process of choosing faces or bodies?] It used to be, on things. I don't seem to--look, I haven't really been doing any studio pictures. On HUMAN ERROR, my last film, the... There're a lot of extras in it, but... And I was involved at the beginning stages of it, but I wasn't really, I didn't really do it. Other people did it.

INT: People like Xander [Xander Berkeley], or Tom [Tom Bower]. Were these people whose work you'd seen before, or did they come in to meet you?

RY: Well, I had worked with Tom on a number of films and I think he's brilliant. I just love him. And I wanted to make a film with him, and Xander, I actually went to China. I chose Xander to go to China with me and I got to know him and I thought he was wonderful, too. What happened on HUMAN ERROR, the last film I cast was, we were--one of the things that's so frustrating--I'm making an aside--about casting for somebody like myself is that it seems to drive the whole thing. In other words, this film HUMAN ERROR, I originally was gonna do it realistically. I ended up doing it with CGI [computer-generated imagery] in a studio. But I was gonna do it in Puerto Rico on a real location and at that point, we--I had an English company, J&M, interested; they loved the script, they wanted to finance it. And I had a lot of Actors interested. I had, you know, even Bill Murray for about six or seven weeks. And I had Actors I knew. I had Alan Arkin for awhile. I had Willem Dafoe. But it became a kind of, like, who did you know? How could you get to somebody? And it was not the way I think about creating characters. And then we never could get the right amount of money for the Actors. You know, we got a million dollars, we offered to Bill Murray. It wasn't enough. But then a half a million wasn't--they wouldn't pay to have John Goodman when we couldn't get Bill Murray. I mean it was just very frustrating. It was kind of a catch-22. And at that point, I went with my Producer. He told me that Tom [Tom Bower], who he had met through me, was in a play and they'd become friends and he was gonna go see it and it was THE CARETAKER, the Pinter [Harold Pinter] play, playing in Hollywood someplace. So I went just to see Tom and Xander who were friends. And while I was watching them, I thought, "My god, these are two guys I know, they're wonderful, they're very different, the characters I want from the characters in this play, but I know they can do it." You know, "I know they can do it. They'd be great." So at the end of the thing, the Producer, he felt the same way I did and I offered them the part and they, you know, they did it. And we raised the money, very modest amount to do the film.

INT: Talk about rehearsal.

RY: Well, I love to rehearse. But very often don't have the opportunity. So I find, as a Director, that the first meeting I have with the Actor sometimes is tremendously important. By that, I mean it may be the only time that I may actually have had to say something to him that really was meaningful about his character and the way, like, for example, I told you I met with Bobby Knott [Robert Knott] and I said--and I discovered the character, the way I wanted him, you know, who he was in just talking to him. And that was, like, at a first meeting. [INT: Now what--] But then we rehearsed, actually, on HUMAN ERROR for weeks. [INT: And how do you work your rehearsals? What's the process? Do you have a read-through first?] We do, yeah. Read-throughs first. We talk about the characters. And then--look, I leave a lot of it up to the Actors. My aesthetic is that they never indicate that they don't play results. I mean I, we talk, I see them play a scene, I'll make comments, possibly suggestions. But I mean Tom Bower in HUMAN ERROR, I mean he created the character. He's fantastic. And so did the others. I mean I will speak to them about if I think that something is, if I think maybe something ought to be done the other way instead of--maybe I think he's projecting, internalize it. You know, keep the anger inside, don't let it out. That might be something I might say. They're sort of like technical things in that sense. I think once you, you know, you choose an Actor, you've chosen, I've chosen them because of my belief that he really could be that character. And then I would be trying to support that.

INT: Now have you learned, for example, in this last one when you did have the rehearsal period. Does it shift you in terms of how you're seeing the piece? Does it change the way you want some things to get written? What does rehearsal do for you in that context?

RY: Well, the rehearsals were ones that the Actors did themselves, essentially. I mean I would be invited to them and I'd see them sometimes, and I'd listen, and I'd make whatever comments I had to make. But they were never... Then the rehearsals that I would want to do is when I get on the set. In other words, on a location, because everything is gonna change to some degree because now it's a physical place. And so I'm actually very reluctant to set anything in a rehearsal. In the rehearsals that I do, I never take anything to where it's ultimately gonna go. I'm afraid that then the Actor is gonna try to repeat. I don't want anything repeated. You know, look--[INT: Will you block?] Pardon me? [INT: Will you block?] Well, the way I do it is, let's say I have a location. Well, first of all, I probably will have been to that location by myself. You know, because the Actors are not coming with you, and I find the location. I will actually play all the parts myself. You know, I'll go through everybody's role, I'll try to imagine it. I'll come in the door, I'll look to see if there's any letters on the nightstand. I'll look to see, does the dog come to see me? Is my wife in the house? I mean, I will go through all of that stuff myself beforehand, just to awaken all my own senses about what it's like to come in a door and to come home. I think that's important, the way you listen, the way all of those little things. So I will, you know, as I said, I think that's very important, for me, anyway, so that I'm--when I see a performance, I might be able to remind the Actor that there is some possible things that he might not have--that he wasn't playing, that he wasn't being aware of. But then I won't... I'll try to be very tactful. I will try to put them in the position. I try to always take people back into the experience so that they can experientially discover it themselves. It's not like I want to be smart and tell them things. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be one-up on them, in any way. I want them to be discovering things for themselves. But--

INT: Now if you've walked the set yourself, and you've seen how you think they might perform, and even probably pre-conceived some of the angles that you might be shooting is--

RY: Oh, I do all of that. [INT: But now here comes the Actor and they may decide to walk over to the window instead of over to the kitchen.] Well, what I do is I usually have a basic kind of plan myself, of how I think it's gonna work out. But then I don't set things. I will have the Actors play it. And then--and my guidelines in that are, of course, it seems to me every scene has a purpose, so that ultimately the scene is gonna go someplace. And but I'll have an idea about how I think it all can happen, but then I'll have them act it out and I will not... And if I see, oh the light is great here, but I'm not gonna tell--I never tell anybody, "I want you to walk and stop here." I just don't do that. I never... There has to be a reason and I believe that if I'm in touch as the Director, because I'm involved in this entire project the same way the Actors are, and growing with it, that if I'm really in touch with what it's about, that the visual ideas that I have will actually come from the same place. And if they don't fit, well, sometimes, I mean I'll examine a script and I'll say, "Gee, this is such a great visual idea. I mean this would be a great way of doing it," but... And then I'll look at the script and I'll say... I mean I've had this happen a number of times. If this line was actually put over here, in front of this line, it will actually even make more sense. And now this happens. In other words, I'm not gonna say to somebody, "Stop in a certain place mechanically because this is where I want you for the camera." I just won't do that. And I've enraged my crew. You know, they say, "Why don't you just tell them the fuck what to do instead of, you know, of being so open and permissive-like." I'm very open and permissive, but I do feel the responsibility for making the decision is on the Director and because it's not fair to the Actor to have to come in to a scene and have to be able to decide all the things because he can't, you know, he just should be responsible for his character. And I don't want the Actor ever trying to tell the story.

RY: And sometimes you can get the Actors very upset. I remember in DOMINICK AND EUGENE, actually, Jamie Lee Curtis was wonderful. There's a scene where Dominick runs down the steps and Gino who has brought her to their apartment, follows after him, and she's left there. And she wanted the scene to somehow to stay with her. You know, because she had these great things. Her situation was very strong. But the scene had to go with them. And so I had to ask her that when--to look in that direction instead of something else that she wanted to do because that's where the story was going. So I have a very--I have a mantra, I suppose. I don't know if it'd be helpful for other people, but I say, “You put the camera where the story is. And then you ask yourself where is the story? Moment by moment by moment, where is the story?” So I never do the--in terms of staging, I never think of it in terms of, like, the big shot and then coverage. So I can enrage people. I've been fired once from a television thing, and actually we ended up being justified. I have to say that in my own defense, but… I mean I got fired because I wasn't doing, like, coverage. I wasn't doing a big shot. So at Universal [Universal Pictures], I'm in New York, they look at the stuff; they don't know how to put it together. They just see individual shots and I know what I'm gonna do. And I'm an Editor, too, and I'm a Cameraman. I mean, I really--I have the whole scene… I mean I've never done a scene--and I hope this doesn't seem arrogant--that didn't cut, in my life. And I don't do masters and then close-ups. I mean there maybe a kind of an internal master, but I believe you put the camera where the story is and I ask myself, "Where's the story?" And where's the place in that scene where I do want it to be revealed that it's in a big room, or that it's this place or that place. There's a place where it's supposed to happen. Not just because the chandelier is beautiful, I'm gonna take a shot through the chandelier, or because people make a movement. If that movement needs to be seen, then I'm gonna be filming it. If the move, you know… Everything is where the story is. That's for me. And there are places where the story objectifies, where you step back and that's where the storyteller is saying something, in a sense, by distancing you all of a sudden so that you see all of a sudden a different perspective. And you're not so--not just inside, seeing it from this way, but all of a sudden, by contrast, you're seeing, appreciating the story from the storyteller's point of view. But--[INT: Let's talk--]--I don't, to me, it's not arbitrary. It's moment by moment, and all of those decisions are made. So when I come on a location with the Actors, I will make a suggestion. Because I think it's not fair to them to, like, say to them, "Well, what do you think you guys would do?" And we don't have the time for that, and they don't really appreciate that anyway. What they want is, they do dearly want direction. But they don't want to be limited. But they do want direction. They do want feedback. I can't--I mean, so many times, I'm working with Actors and they say, "Oh god," I mean, 'cause I do give reactions. I do get involved with them. I say what I think, and they want that. They say, so many times, their Director, they're not even--nobody tells them anything, or they don't talk to them. I don't understand that. [INT: Yeah.]

INT: Talk about your working with other DPs [Director of Photography]. How do you hire another cameraperson, being a cameraperson yourself. And you have. [RY: Yeah, well--] So how do you make that decision?

RY: Well, from getting to know them, seeing their work. I don't have that many opportunities. You know, I've made about 18 feature films, I guess. 18, 19, in my life. And a bunch of documentaries. So it seems like a fair amount, but spread over the years it's not--it doesn't seem to me like I've done so much. And so I've worked, essentially, with people who I've gotten to know, and I trust them and they know me and they don't mind my picking up the camera. I guess that's part of it. And maybe I would be, weakness on my own part. Maybe I would be intimated if I were to say to Vilmos Zsigmond, "I'd like to shoot this." I mean I'm thinking of him because he loved ALAMBRISTA! He said he wished he'd shot it himself. I'm very comfortable, empathetically, with a handheld camera. [INT: Is--] And I set all my shots. I mean I always pick the shot that I'm gonna do, and then I'm very free with the--I mean Ray Villalobos [Reynaldo Villalobos] or Curtis Clark or Mike Barrow [Michael Barrow]. I mean I feel they're tremendously good and very empathetic with the camera. But when something is happening and I often stage a scene where you have to move like this, I want it to--somebody's walking by this way and I want that to help pick up the other person and then the next thing, and this comes out of my documentary shooting. If I were to show you, like, CORTILE CASCINO and the Eskimo films [THE ESKIMO: FIGHT FOR LIFE] and you see I'm catching all these little details, and then some scenes in, like, CAUGHT, where I do the same kind of thing, but I do it--I set up a situation and then I move in it with the camera. And maybe I'll shoot it four times and then I have to know I have it, because I have to know, where I imagine the cutting points are gonna be. [INT: If you--] And I do that and, you know, the scene that I might do, it may only take me two or three hours, which would be, I think, days if I had it on dollies and stuff like that.

INT: So you actually prefer handheld, if you can.

RY: Definitely. [INT: For a whole picture or for parts of?] Well, a lot of my pictures are... Well, when there's no reason to do it, I'll put it on a dolly or tripod or something like that, only to hold it. But no, I keep the camera, I like to keep it fluid. I like to keep it intuitively able to move with the slightest movement of an Actor or something. I prefer to be handheld and I don't think you can tell. I mean it's not like that crazy kind of, jittery, or anything like that. I don't--as a matter of fact I'm upset by what they do today. I mean, I just shot a BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and it was a lot of fun, actually, with very good camera people. But occasionally they'll do this [moves hand] to the camera. You know, I don't like that. But, you know, it's part of their style. I'm old enough now. I know they're paying for it, I have to accept it.

INT: Is the--what do you talk about when you talk about light with the camera person? What kind of conversations would go on there?

RY: Well, I'm very deficient in color. I'm red-green color blind. So I'm very modest in my opinions about color. And color is very important. So the last feature film that I shot and lit was NOTHING BUT A MAN, which was in black and white. And PLOT AGAINST HARRY [THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY]. And I got nominations, Indie [Indie Spirit Award] nomination for photography on that. I'm very good with light, with black and white. But when it moves into color, I'm insecure, so I don't make a judgment about that. But I do have strong feelings about the light. For example, in, like in RICH KIDS, I wanted the film, because it was about a family and the family was becoming, was kind of dysfunctional. I wanted it lit, essentially, with daylight 'cause I wanted natural shadows. And I wanted the major source first being the sun. And I thought it keeps things in a certain kind of perspective and gives the right kind of size to things. And then there's a place where the kids go, they sneak off to one of the father's pads where he sees his girlfriends. And that, I lit completely with fluorescent and so shadows were either obliterated or they were in different directions. I used a lot of mirrors, so I destroyed a lot of up and down and made it not grounded because I thought that that was the world that the father was in; it was a world that was not grounded. So I think I probably have a very traditional kind of feeling about light in terms of where it comes from. It's very--for me, it's almost--I mean I do it very psychologically. I like to know where the sources are. I use a lot of practicals. I like... And they start taking on a meaning for me. And, like, at the end of EXTREMITIES, I shot the whole film and this was Curtis Clark doing it, so that it all--most of the film takes place in one afternoon, and it's getting darker and darker and darker and darker, which is very difficult to do, but we shot it that way, and then finally at the end, when she has this guy vanquished and is alone, and all of a sudden it's that time of when you've been in conversations with somebody and you've been sitting on the porch and twilight comes and you don't even realize. Then all of a sudden it's dark, and then I turn on a light, you know. So it has a lot of profound psychological meaning to me. I think I'm very sensitive to light, and particularly to the human face, which is the thing I think is the most beautiful and important thing that I'm interested in filming.

INT: In--using EXTREMITIES to move onto production design, this is a challenge. It's all supposed to have happened, if I remember correctly, in one space. [RY: That was a big challenge.] And for you, I know, shooting location is something that you are very comfortable with. So I'm curious where you are, when you're talking to Production Designers and how you want to proceed.

RY: Well, we looked and we found a house that we thought would work and that was really good. I believe that--and this is also in terms of the production design. One of the things about, if the camera moves, you can have much simpler lighting because things keep changing. If things are static, for example, you're filming a face, you need--and the face just stays in that place, the lighting has to be much more subtle, you know. You're able to look more. You want to be able to bring out more. You want to--it has to be more subtle. But if--but you can have one light bulb and if people are moving, and the camera is moving, then there's a sense of life and movement and contrast that I think is really necessary to keep the dramatic interest in, in visually, in the scene. So even in EXTREMITIES, I mean, as it got later and later and the light was--everything was beginning--people were beginning to merge, it had to be done very subtly because if you were on a close-up of somebody, you couldn't just let them be. I mean they had to be the little, tiny glint of something that from the fading light, or...

INT: In working with your Production Designer, do you, I mean--the location scout, how are you on location scouts?

RY: Well, I love the scouting. And one of the things that I say to the people who are scouting is, “Don't wait until it's perfect and you're bringing me the right location.” Because I'm gonna learn a tremendous amount by mistakes and I want to see things that--I want to be taking a lot of different things that have different ideas because I may be able to incorporate some of those ideas and they may give me staging ideas that I will use later when we do the scene. I say, you know, “I'll learn just as much from the things that don't work, 'cause then they'll tell me what I mustn't do." Because I do believe when I get the staging, when I find the right location, that it is absolutely, it dictates exactly where the camera's gonna be and why the people are where they are, when I find the really right location. It can be very complex even, but it's gonna be, as I said, when the camera's in that spot, it's where the story ought to be. And I don't think of backgrounds as being backgrounds. I believe that they inform the foreground. I mean, now, I'm talking more philosophically, obviously.

INT: But you've had to--and I'm with you on this, but you've had places where you've had to build as well. I assume that TRIUMPH [TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRIT] they were build--

RY: Yeah, oh, well on HUMAN ERROR, the last film I made, is completely--I shot in a stage with three Actors and a bunch of extras, with little pieces of props, and created the whole world with CGI [computer-generated imagery]. I mean I'd never done anything like--it's all blue screen. So the whole background and a lot of the world I created was with blue screen and I had people in empty space. Tom [Tom Bower] hitting a golf ball and he's just on the floor of the studio. And, but I've learned... I mean, that's one of the things that's so exciting about the whole thing, to me, is that how important the imagination is. And what you can do. I mean, for example, I just did a scene--talking about design and imagination. I shoot Xander [Xander Berkeley] on a bridge. Now, he's on a plank with one piece of railing. That's all. But in his costume, which I think is tremendously important. That helps ground him. But we've discussed that he's standing on a river that's really toxic and there's a factory behind him and we've discussed it. He has a basic idea of what's happening. And then I shoot--and he's looking, and he lights a cigar and he looks in the direction of where Tom Bower, the boss, is hitting golf balls across this river. Now Tom, I shoot Tom, I get a camera in the position I think it would be right from the bridge, and he's on the floor of the studio and he hits a golf ball. That's all. On the floor of the studio, with blue behind him. Okay. Then, I shoot the floor of the studio and I move it toward the bridge, which is just the plank and one railing. And as I move it, I come up as Dobbitt, the other character, comes out to meet Hanrahan; as Bobby Knott [Robert Knott] comes out to meet Xander. And, okay.

RY: Then my--and this is an example of--now then my, in a sense, not the Production Designer, but the artist who's doing the work of the models [referring to the making of HUMAN ERROR], a wonderful young guy who's 25 years old at this point, Chris Healer, and he says to me, "Bob, when I look--the camera, you did the shot looking down at the floor. You know, I could put something under the water for you. Like a skeleton or something like that, you know, the river's toxic.” So I said, "Jeez, that's interesting. But I don't know. That's a little bold; that's not quite, you know. But I can do more, can't I?” "Yeah," he said, "you can do anything you want." You know, "This is blue screen. And I can back up." He says, "Yeah." Okay. And just this--in the same amount of time I'm telling it right now, I see it because he opened the door for me. I said, "Okay. Hanrahan looks, sees Merkin hitting the golf ball. The shot I want is, I'm underwater and the golf ball hits the water. And I want the golf ball--obviously it's slowed down--and it starts to go down in the water and as it goes down in the water, the camera follows it and it dissolves. And then through the bubbles, I want to see a forklift and somebody--and there's a figure belted into the forklift. And it's wearing a yellow, one of those radiation-proof kind of jackets. But the arms are empty, and so is the hood. And it's moving in the current. And I want to be able to see just about eight, 10 feet. That's all. And I want--as the golf ball goes down, I want to move through the bubbles, towards this figure and as I move up toward it, and it turns and I want to see that there's nobody in it. And I want to follow up, because I need something to follow, I want you to put a little flag on the back of the thing like people do in supermarkets when they're driving around on a little mechanical thing. And on top of it, just above the water, I want the company logo. And that's my shot. And then as I come up to that, I want that to be the shot that I did, moving up toward the bridge." And that's what we did. And so I had melded now. And then the artist did this fantastic factory, with the lighting and the water. I mean, they did all of these things that I couldn't possibly know how to do. But now I know--and I said, "Okay, that's what I want to do. Now how do I do it?" So he drew me a volume, you know, a rectangular volume. And that's the river. Okay. So I said, "Okay," and he gave me a little virtual camera and I put it on the edge of the thing, and now I can see what it can see, and I said, "Okay, the golf ball lands here and the camera goes down with it like this, okay. And then put the little model of the forklift. No, turn it a little bit, yeah, no, bring it a little closer. Yeah, that's what I want." It was just like I was a DP [Director of Photographer] on land. Only I didn't get wet or anything like that. And I did my shot. And it was [snaps], that was how fast it was.

INT: This is a curious question about this process: is it motion-control?

RY: Well, the camera's a virtual camera. There's no--no, it's not motion-control. I mean, there was no tracks, nothing. [INT: Got it.] I had already--I just shot this shot, and we melded, we created all this other stuff and tied it into this shot that I did this way. And it worked out perfectly. It's a really great shot. [INT: But you were--this is--you were not doing the thing that POLAR EXPRESS [THE POLAR EXPRESS] does.] I haven't seen that yet. [INT: Well, the issue is, they're sets that have, like, 50, 100, 200 cameras all around them and everybody's got these dots and things and all the rest is--] No, I have to see that. [INT: It's another technique, the way they're, you know.] No, mine is much simpler, but I know that ILM [Industrial Light & Magic] said, like, 11 million bucks for me to do what I wanted to do, and I did it in my own--we built our own studio and we did it in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. [INT: That's amazing.] And it's just as good. I mean it's beautiful, you know, the artistry and everything like that.

INT: Talk about working with Costume Designers. I mean have you hired people separately? 'Cause you do appreciate the need of 'em.

RY: Yeah. Well, definitely. Very often, if I can use a woman named Hilary Rosenfeld, because we've worked together a lot. And she has complete understanding. She never overstates anything, and yet everything is always true to the character. I believe in--I mean, costumes are tremendously important. And also sometimes she gets fussy because the Actor, maybe, wants something else and I insist that that all be worked out. It's very important that the Actor feel comfortable in the costume. I mean that's like a skin to them. And, but she's wonderfully intuitive about making statements without seeming as if you're making any kind of statement, 'cause I don't like anything that's, you know, overt or indicating.

INT: What did you do about in, since you said you'd done a couple pictures that were period, and obviously TRIUMPH [TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRIT] was. How did you deal with both design, production design, and costumes for that one?

RY: Well, we did a lot of research on the costumes and everything like that, and Hilary [Hilary Rosenfeld] was there for that. And it's very important that everything be aged and go though the process. You know, so that it's really realistic. I do believe, very much, and I don't want to violate people's feelings about--that something is not real. I want it to be real. I mean, if I'm in Auschwitz [Auschwitz concentration camp] in '43 [1943], I really want it to look that way, and I'll go to great lengths to try to do that, you know. I mean, I won't be buying people special underwear, you know, I mean, I'm not, you know, I have my own limitations on how far I go, but I will try to have a real verisimilitude. And as I said, to me, the most important thing is the psychological reality. And that's, of course, what I stress, but I do stress the physical reality. I mean, when we did TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRIT, I mean, the Nazi uniforms were accurate, the prisoners were all dressed accurately. The dogs. I mean, everything. I shot in the location! We reproduced the kind of lighting that they had and we rebuilt one of the crematoriums so that we could blow it up.

INT: Did you go through some challenges in EXTREMITIES considering that you've got--they're all in the same wardrobe for the entire movie? So just making the choices there?

RY: Isn't that interesting? I never even thought of that as a problem, because it didn't become one. I think, you know, if you're really in the moment, and you don't know what's gonna happen next and that's what you want to know, I think people won't get bored. I mean, if a thing has a real life, and I thought Farrah [Farrah Fawcett] and the other actresses were marvelous, and they had tremendous life in them. I think, you know, a story should be something that you get so caught up in it that you can't even escape it, you know. [INT: Were there production design or costume issues? We haven't talked about a couple other pieces, but like ONE TRICK PONY, or actually, or SHORT EYES, in design. Ideas. Were there some, either issues in production design or wardrobe that you remember on let's say either of those, or the last two?] I think they were essentially realistic and, you know... I think you're making subtle statements, but, you know, not to fight anybody's sense of reality, the audience's sense of the truth in the situation. [INT: So does that mean if you had a choice between being on location or--] So it was naturalistic in that sense.

INT: If you have a choice between being on location or building, will you always prefer location then?

RY: Not necessarily. I would say, basically yes. I love locations because there's so much truth in them that's so much deeper than--you could scrape something and there's still the reality of what's below it, so a location is fantastic, but... But like HUMAN ERROR, chose to go in a completely different direction and partly because I couldn't afford to go onto the particular location that I wanted to go on, and so I tried to make the, make it non-realistic, and make it expressive. And so I went in the complete opposite direction. In other words, on this film I made, I did something that I had never done before, 'cause I think most of my things are--I try to not indicate, even with the music, for example, 'cause this is another expressive form. On HUMAN ERROR--and my kids did the score and I think it's a brilliant, brilliant score. A guy hits a typewriter, keys, and each key he hits is a different note. And then the bar is "bong," you know? And I use--so I'm going in a completely different direction. I said, "I'm making an animated film, is what I'm making. With real people. And I'm not gonna--" and because I usually use music, I don't want it to be cloying and I don't want it to be out in front. I don't want it to be telling the audience what's happening. I want it to support, but it's tremendously--since it's a non-verbal language, you can say things in music that you couldn't, that you wouldn't say, of course, in your story. And it can support an emotional channel to try to take the audience, to bring the things--bring people together and be going in the right direction. So I think that's where music can be very supportive. But when I did this, I did it completely different. The film opens up with actually a cockroach that's going across a stamping machine and he sees something in the other side and he has to get across. And I had the kids, they did a piece of music that's so big and so fantastic and monumental. And, that the irony, it made it very ironic and very funny, this little cockroach and his monumental struggle to get across. And of course the second one gets crushed. But it's big, heroic kind of music. And so completely the opposite of understating and the reality of it. It made a stage out of it. So I think, look, all the stuff, these are the tools that we use as Directors...